I grip the steering wheel so hard, I'm surprised it doesn't crumple.

It's no secret that we're only temporary allies. Neither of us is pretending that this is a lasting partnership. I help him get home with his wings, he helps me find my sister. After that I'll be on my own. I know this. I've never for a moment forgotten about it.

But after only a couple of days of having someone watch my back, the thought of being on my own again feels...lonely.

I clip the open door of a truck.

“I thought you said you could drive this thing.”

I realize I've been pressing on the accelerator. We're weaving drunkenly at 40 miles per hour. I pull it back down to 20 and force my fingers to relax.

“Leave the driving to me, and I'll leave the planning to you.” I still have to take a calming breath as I say this. I've been mad at my dad all this time for leaving me to make all the hard decisions. But now that Raffe is taking the lead and insisting on me following him blind, it churns my stomach.

We see some ragged people along the side of the road here and there, but not a lot. They scurry away as soon as they see our car. The way they stare, the way they hide, the way their furtive, dirty faces peer at us with burning curiosity brings to mind the hated word: monkey. This is what the angels have turned us into.

As we get closer to the city, we see more people. The path on the road is less labyrinthine.

Eventually, the road is mostly cleared of cars, although not of people. Everyone still looks at the car, but there's less interest, as though a car moving on the roads is something they see regularly. The closer we get to the city, the more people there are walking on the road. They look around warily at every sound and motion, but they're out in the open.

Once we enter the city proper, the damage is everywhere. San Francisco got pummeled along with a lot of other cities. It looks like a smoldering, post-apocalyptic, melting nightmare out of some Hollywood blockbuster.

Coming into the city, I catch glimpses of the Bay Bridge. It looks like a dashed line across the water with a few crucial chunks missing from the middle. I’ve seen photos of the city after the great quake of 1906. The devastation was staggering, and I’d always found it hard to imagine what that must have been like.

I don’t have to imagine anymore.

Entire blocks are charred rubble. The initial meteor showers, quakes and tsunamis only caused part of the damage. San Francisco was a city that had rows and rows of houses and buildings built so close together you couldn’t fit a piece of paper between the buildings. Gas pipes burst and caused fires that raged unchecked. The sky was choked with blood-tinged smoke for days.